I love writing. I revere the use of language as an instrument for seeking the truth about life. My books are downloadable and the paperback editions will be appearing soon. Click on the links at the right side of this page. Peruse this blog, it's loaded with music, photography and writing. Hey, sign up for my email list!

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Veep: A View Of Honesty In TV Dialogue

We
watched four episodes of VEEP. We
laughed, we were entertained, but we didn't finish the disc and we sent back
both discs, Numbers one and two of Season One.

Something
about the series struck me as futile. I
will give ANY series a reasonable shot.
It's hard to produce quality work in this medium and the work is
arduous. I've seen pilot episodes that
seemed like crap but the episodes got better as the series progressed. The writers got their stride, the actors
inhabited their characters and that ineffable magic of FILM started to
work.

VEEP has
talented people. Julia Louis-Dreyfus
has the authority to make a credible Vice President and she uses her patented
body language to great comic effect.

Still,
there's something missing from VEEP. It
has no core. I didn't see any change in
the characters. Four episodes is enough
to reveal whether or not a series has a dramatic structure, whether or not the
characters are going somewhere. They
might be going to Hell but still, at least they're in movement, they're
changing. Veep lacked this sense of
dynamism. The characters kept repeating
the sharp, witty and very nasty banter
ad infinitum. They kept trying to climb
over one another's social and professional errors to enhance their own
careers. So what? Isn't that what everyone does? Not necessarily, but this kind of
one-upsmanship has become a staple of television comedy. TV and movie characters now speak, and act,
as if their internal censors have been turned off. I first noticed this tendency on SCRUBS, and it was
brilliant. There was something shocking
about the way Doctor Perry Cox spoke to his interns. He spoke the absolute, devastating truth, nothing was watered
down. Sometimes it was
inappropriate. Dr. Cox couldn't care
less. He abandoned the idea of "appropriate" because
it was useless. He played a
teacher/physician and if he couldn't resort to blistering character
assassination, one of his students may fail to learn a life-saving lesson. On SCRUBS the characters routinely spoke
dialogue that cut through the usual pleasantries of social life. It was seldom less than hilarious. From Dr. Kelso's blithely honest selfishness
to The Janitor's pointless malice, the characters on that groundbreaking series
ripped away the masks that people use in polite society. This mask has a name
in psychological parlance. It's called
The Persona.

As I
watched the characters in Veep attempt to mine these same veins of ruthless
truth-telling, I felt as though this indicated a complete paradigm shift.

The
Persona is disappearing in television
and film. Characters actually say what
they think and feel. This may enhance a
sense of authenticity but it also points to a vanishing civility. People are becoming more rude, and not just
in TV and film. They may be more real,
but they are also less concerned about one another and more concerned with
themselves. Honesty is a good thing but
there's an evil side to such candor. It
has become a license to hurt.

SCRUBS
had heart. It had a moral premise. Dr.
Cox's ferocity was offset by his vulnerability. We knew that people weren't as cruel as they seemed to be. They were just tired of the same old shit. The producers of that innovative series made
comedy gold out of the idea that characters could say the craziest things,
especially when they were true.

I
abandoned VEEP because I didn't feel that same sense of compassion.

There was no moral thrust to the stories. VEEP seemed to be amoral, and that was
ultimately boring.

As
comedy, VEEP can't touch SCRUBS, and as political drama it doesn't even kiss
the hem of WEST WING'S robe. I give it
two muskrats for the inventiveness of the dialogue and the sadly funny
viciousness of its put-downs.

About Me

A Midwesterner by birth, I migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that I related better to the Beatniks. I harkened back to an "old school" world of hard bop, Coltrane, jazz, poetry, painting and photography. A large part of my life went "off the rails" and I experienced the reality of the streets for too long. Putting myself back together was the defining experience of my life so far. It wasn't easy. It did, however, nurture the writer in me. I have written novels, memoirs, poems, humorous fake emails, and commercials

for ridiculous non existent products. I have a passion for astronomy, history, psychology, the pure abstract absurdity of human experience (what the hell is it?). My partner is an honest to god Animal Communicator, as nutty as that may sound to some people. She is the real deal. She also suffers from Fibro and it's a curse with which we must work every day. Come visit my blog and